


howling ghosts they reappear (in mountains that are stacked with fear)

by WingedQuill



Series: geralt sad hours 2020 [7]
Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types, Wiedźmin | The Witcher Series - Andrzej Sapkowski
Genre: (THIS IS NOT WHAT CAUSED THE MCD), Age Regression/De-Aging, Angst, Eskel Needs a Hug (The Witcher), Geralt Whump Week (The Witcher), Ghosts, Grief/Mourning, Hopeful Ending, Hurt Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Marriage, Memory Alteration, Memory Loss, Murder, Soft Eskel (The Witcher), Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-08
Updated: 2020-07-08
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:08:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25138216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WingedQuill/pseuds/WingedQuill
Summary: Geralt is always the first one to come home for the winter. No matter how early Eskel arrives, he can expect to find his husband already there, waiting for him. He can expect warmth and kisses and a year's worth of stories from the Path.Except, one winter, Geralt doesn't come home first.Except, one winter, Geralt doesn't come home at all.Except, one winter, the ghost of a small child asks Eskel to play with him.(Written for Geralt Whump Week, Day 7: Kaer Morhen)
Relationships: Eskel & Lambert (The Witcher), Eskel & Vesemir (The Witcher), Eskel/Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Lambert, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Vesemir
Series: geralt sad hours 2020 [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1811878
Comments: 38
Kudos: 227





	howling ghosts they reappear (in mountains that are stacked with fear)

**Author's Note:**

> Last day of Geralt Whump Week and I straight-up kill him and write 7,000 words in one day like a madwoman. Whoops.
> 
> CW for character death, a past suicide attempt (not graphically described), vomit, and murder (not super graphically described)

Geralt is always the first one back for the winter. It doesn’t matter how early Eskel heads back to Kaer Morhen, how early he grows tired of the world’s cruelty and seeks out the warmth of the keep and its inhabitants, Geralt is always waiting for him with a soft smile and a kiss that makes Eskel feel like he is really, truly coming home.

Geralt is always the first one back.

So when Eskel trudges through the doorway of the keep in late November, the first snow of the season already sticking to his boots, he fully expects his husband to come running down the hall to great him, demanding to know what took him so long.

But the only thing that greets him is silence, and a few of the ghosts, giggling and whispering together on the staircase. Eskel ignores them, stomping his feet as he walks through the door, both to get the snow off his shoes and to send his presence echoing through the keep.

The door to the parlor swings open.

Lambert stands there, his forehead creased with worry, dark bags pulling at the skin under his eyes.

“Hey Eskel,” he says, voice hoarse. “Welcome home.”

Eskel’s stomach flips over, tying his guts into knots. He pushes past Lambert and glances around the parlor, chest heaving. Vesemir stands by his favorite armchair, looking at Eskel with undisguised concern. Three ghosts sit around the card table, watching him from behind their hands.

But Geralt isn’t here.

Geralt _should_ be here, Geralt is _always_ here.

“Where’s Geralt?” he manages to ask. He’s surprised he can hear himself over the ringing in his ears.

Vesemir sighs and shakes his head.

“We don’t know,” he says. “He hasn’t been back yet.”

“He probably just got caught up somewhere,” Lambert says from behind him. He rests a hand on Eskel’s shoulder and Eskel flinches, every nerve humming and tense within him. Lambert snatches his hand away, and Eskel bites down on the urge to ask him to come back.

“He’s never late,” Eskel whispers. “In eighty years, he hasn’t been late.”

Lambert and Vesemir exchange a glance. The air is heavy around him, too heavy to breathe properly.

“Well,” Lambert says. “First time for everything.”

***

Eskel refuses to go too far into the keep.

He needs to be able to hear the front door at all times, needs to be able to hear _Geralt_ at all times. Needs to run into his arms the second he comes home and scold him for worrying them all. Needs to kiss his stupid face and check him over for whatever injuries he might have sustained and hold him and hold him and just—

He just needs to know that he’s okay.

He sleeps in the parlor, under the mass of furs that Vesemir keeps adding to, in front of the big, crackling fire that Lambert keeps stoking. They’re both worried about him, he knows, or worried about Geralt with him as a proxy. For that reason, he accepts their care, accepts their offers of warmth and more warmth. But, snug and cozy on the couch with his family drifting around him, he can’t help but wonder where Geralt is right now.

What if he’s cold? What if he’s freezing to death as Eskel lies here in the heat doing _nothing,_ and—

He sits bolt upright, shoving the furs off himself, slips over to the window, and stares out at the falling snow for a long, long time.

***

Days slip into weeks.

The snow falls harder and harder.

The mountains are impassable by now, even by the most skilled mountaineer.

Geralt’s still out there.

***

Eskel feels like he’s trapped himself here, in this warm, comfortable castle. He’s trapped himself here when he could be out looking for Geralt, could be out _helping_ Geralt, saving Geralt from whatever nonsense he’s gotten himself into this time.

The scenarios fill his head at all hours of the day. An endless cycle as he paces the halls, the ghosts watching him from the castle’s shadowing crannies, too nervous to approach the stormy witcher.

_What if he was caught under an avalanche and is trapped under a mountain’s worth of snow?_

_What if he’s shipwrecked on an island somewhere, rationing his food and praying he’ll survive the winter?_

_What if he was captured by an angry mage, or a pissed-off lord, or a brutish group of villagers, what if they’re hurting him, torturing him, killing him slowly, and he’s just begging for me to come?_

He rounds a corner. A stray thought dances through his brain, clearer than all the rest. He closes his eyes. He refuses to dwell on this one.

_What if he’s already dead?_

***

In most winters, nights at Kaer Morhen are filled with laughter and stories, the wolves demanding tales of each other’s exploits throughout the year, comparing new scars, judging the impressiveness of monsters killed and battles won.

Geralt always has the best stories. All the crazy shit always seems to happen to him.

But now, they just sit silently, desperately searching for something to say. Eskel’s hand grows numb around a glass of White Gull and he wants to laugh and whine and argue like _normal_ but—

There’s a space between him and Lambert on the couch, an emptiness that draws all eyes in the room, and they don’t move closer together to fill it.

***

The late nights are filled, usually, with a different kind of warmth. Him and Geralt moving together, re-learning each other’s bodies after a year apart. Geralt pressing kisses up his spine and over his scars, whispering of his beauty as he goes. Geralt grinning down at their ringed hands, laced together over Eskel’s chest. Geralt sinking down on him and welcoming him _home, home, home._

He can’t even be bothered to take himself in hand, to seek out a substitute for Geralt’s touch. He’s too cold.

***

The winter solstice comes and goes without fanfare. The days are getting lighter now, but they don’t feel like it.

***

Eskel has grown used to feeling his heart race constantly, through the day and night and awful moments in between the two. He’s grown used to panic that burns his throat and lingers like metal on his tongue. He’s grown used to waking and reaching for the empty space next to him, and he’s grown used to the first, great wave of fear of the day, when he can’t find Geralt in it.

But there’s still hope. Burning beneath everything, there’s still hope that he’ll be able to find Geralt when spring comes. That maybe Geralt really _had_ just gotten caught up in something, that he’ll be waiting in the village just below the pass. That he’ll hold Eskel while he falls apart in his arms, and that everything, _everything,_ will be alright then.

And then, well, Eskel doesn’t care that the Path is supposed to be walked alone. He’s never leaving his husband’s side again.

Point is, Eskel has grown used to a lot. But he hasn’t yet grown used to despair.

***

That comes in January.

***

Vesemir has decided that Eskel needs something to do with his hands, so he has him rebinding old books from their library. It is soothing, Eskel will admit that. It gives him something else to focus on, rather than the ever-present dread festering in his brain.

He’s so focused, in fact, that he doesn’t even look up when a gaggle of ghosts come giggling into the room, settling down by the fire and starting up some kind of hand game. A smile drifts over his face as he works. Hearing the voices of long-dead witchers—dead in the trials and the sacking and dozens of failed contracts—hurts, but it’s also comforting, in a way. The knowledge that the ghosts aren’t suffering, that they have each other, makes something settle in Eskel’s chest.

He guides the needle through the pages of the book. In and out, nice and even. He reaches for the glue.

There’s a light breeze, a whisper of wind as something moves through the room.

“Eskel! Come and play with us!”

He freezes.

_No._

He closes his eyes. The voice isn’t familiar. It _isn’t,_ and he wouldn’t even know if it was, it’s been _years_ since it was that high. It’s just some kid that died a long time ago, trying to get one of the adults to play with them. It’s not—

“Come _onnnnnn!”_ A freezing burst of air runs over his arms, _through_ his arms, and the ghost gasps. Not used to having his hands go through the living.

_New._

Eskel is going to be sick. He’s going to vomit all over the books he’s supposed to be binding. Vesemir will be furious.

_No he won’t. He’ll be too busy grieving._

“Come on ‘Skel!” Another burst of cold, another gasp. Like he doesn’t remember he just _tried_ that, like his memory isn’t working properly yet.

Eskel opens his eyes.

A child hovers before him. He’s a small thing, all bright eyes and curly hair and dimples. He grins at Eskel when he opens his eyes, like he doesn’t have a care in the world. His brow is smooth, free of pain, like it was before the mutagens wracked through him. His pupils are round, unaltered.

“Aren’t we a bit old to be playing peak-a-boo?” he asks with a snort. Eskel just stares at him.

_Geralt._

It’s Geralt.

It’s Geralt, young and happy, as he was before the trials. It’s Geralt, floating and transparent and unable to touch the world. It’s Geralt, dead.

He’s dead.

Eskel’s husband is dead.

The air goes out of the room and the air rings louder, louder, louder, a month and a half of panic whirling around his ears in a violent crescendo. Something catches in his throat and he chokes, an awful strangled noise that has Geralt looking at him with worry.

“Are you okay? Did Remus beat you up again? Cause I’ll kick his ass if he did, I promise.”

Already so determined to protect. _Always_ so determined to protect, that’s what Eskel loves—loved—

The room is too tight, too close, and the laughter of the other ghosts is too fucking loud. Eskel surges to his feet, stumbles around Geralt (even though he doesn’t need to, even though he could walk right _through him, fuck)_ and staggers out of the room, his hand pressed over his mouth.

He’s going to be sick, he’s going to be—

“Eskel?”

It’s Lambert, always-near, always-fussing Lambert, frowning at Eskel as he creeps closer. Eskel trips over his own feet, catching himself against the wall. Too tight, the hallway is too tight, and too loud, and _too much._ He doubles over himself, hot-cold shivers running up his back, sweat sliding down his neck. He gags on air, on grief, on the awful knowledge that _Geralt is dead and there’s nothing he can do._

Lambert is pressing close—too close—and there’s a warm, solid hand on his back, and Eskel loses the battle against his stomach. He doesn’t have much to throw up, these days, but his pitiful lunch spatters over the flagstones. Lambert makes a disgusted noise behind him, but Eskel can’t find the spare emotion to feel embarrassed. Embarrassment, shame, all of that has fled him, because _Geralt is dead_ and nothing else matters.

“Eskel?” says a small voice. He shudders around another wave of vomit. Of course Geralt wouldn’t wait quietly in the parlor while his best friend ran out of the room. Of course.

“Not now kid,” Lambert says, and he doesn’t recognize Geralt. He doesn’t recognize Geralt, and it doesn’t matter that that makes _sense,_ given Lambert’s age, it’s enough to kick Eskel’s legs out from under him.

He falls to his knees, and Lambert starts cursing, and he’s vaguely aware that he’s sitting in his own sick, but it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t—

“Geralt,” he gasps. “Lamb, it’s Geralt, it’s—”

Geralt kneels down in front of him, eyes brimming with tears that won’t ever—can’t ever—fall.

“Is he sick, mister witcher?” he asks Lambert. “We should bring him to the healers, shouldn’t we?”

Lambert looks very pale. Eskel isn’t sure if he’s still breathing.

“I’ll take him,” he says. “He’ll be fine, okay kid? You just—go back to playing your game, alright?”

Geralt looks at Eskel, bites his lip. Eskel squeezes his eyes shut. He can’t look at this small, confused, _dead_ version of his love for another second.

“Okay,” he says at last. “Okay. Promise he’ll be alright?”

“I promise,” Lambert says, and his voice is shaking. “Run along.”

There’s a gust of wind and the hallway falls silent again.

“Shit,” Lambert says eventually. “ _Fuck,_ Eskel.”

Eskel doesn’t answer. If he opens his mouth, he’s either going to start crying or vomiting, and either way he doesn’t think he’ll be able to stop. He brings his arms around himself and squeezes, hard, trying to stop the emotion from leaking out of him.

“Come on,” Lambert says. He slips his arm around Eskel’s waist. “Come on, up you get.”

“He’s dead, Lamb,” Eskel whispers. He makes no attempt to get up. He thinks the world might break in half if he tries.

Air, sucked in through teeth. Lambert’s arm is trembling against him, with sadness or shock or anger, Eskel doesn’t know. A warm weight dropped against his shoulder. Lambert’s hair scratching against his neck.

“He’s dead,” he says again, because it’s important that Lambert understands this. “He’s—”

“Fuck, I _know,_ okay?” His voice is raised in a shout but it shakes with tears. “I know.”

“He’s—fuck what happened to him—how—how did he— _how?”_

Lambert’s arm tightens around him, pressing his panic back inside.

“We’ll figure it out,” Lambert says. “And we’ll make sure he doesn’t—we’ll make sure he wakes up, alright? I promise. But you need to get up for me.”

 _Make sure he wakes up._ Like that was something any of them had control over. Like it was up to them to decide if Geralt would be able to drag his mind into the present, or if he’d just wind up like one of the hundreds of forever children, wandering through the keep.

Or worse. One of the wraiths.

“I can’t,” he says, because getting up means living, getting up means mourning Geralt while he’s right _there,_ watching them with eyes that can’t see them, not really _._

“You have to,” Lambert says. “Come on. You’ve done plenty of things you thought you couldn’t.”

He had. They all had. But none of them _weighed_ on him like this. None of them felt like the keep had come crashing down around him, pinning him beneath tons of rubble. None of them crushed his chest and broke his spine and made him feel like he was dying, too.

Geralt.

_Geralt._

“Geralt,” he whispers, the name hanging in the air like dust. The crushed debris of a fallen castle. “Geralt.”

He still doesn’t cry. Even as Lambert heaves him to his feet, even as he staggers down the hallway in which he greeted his husband a thousand times. Even as Lambert drags him into the kitchen that Geralt spent so much time in, testing out new recipes he’d learned out on the Path, guiding Eskel’s hands over delicate pastry and hearty bread. Even as Vesemir looks up from his place at the stove with a concern that quickly grows into fear.

Lambert sets Eskel down in a rickety wooden chair and walks over to Vesemir, his footsteps heavy. He puts a hand on his chest, stopping him before he can rush over to Eskel, and says something to him in a low, cracking voice.

Eskel sits in his chair and stares at the floor. This whole room is full of Geralt. This whole _castle_ is full of Geralt. It hurts too much to exist in.

There’s a sob, jagged and rough, like its owner has almost forgotten how to cry. Eskel lifts his too heavy head. Vesemir is leaning against the counter, his hand over his mouth, his shoulders hitching with sobs. Lambert steps forward, his steps tentative, and holds out his arms.

Vesemir sweeps him up, clutching him close. Lambert fists his hands into Vesemir’s shirt and an awful noise comes pouring out of his throat, something between a scream and a howl.

Eskel thinks he should get up, should join them, should unlock the barrier in his throat and cry alongside them.

He stays in his chair.

***

If the castle felt tight and close and confining before, it’s nothing compared to how it is now.

Geralt is everywhere.

Not just the memories, although those are awful enough—Geralt laughing as he tugs Eskel into the library, pressing kiss after kiss against his lips, Geralt lounging on one of the many window seats around the castle, eyes closed as he basks in the sun, Geralt riding his horse across the unbroken white fields, sending up puffs of snow around him. But the child, the spirit that holds the memories of his husband, is just around every corner Eskel turns. Climbing up the rafters or playing tag through the hallways or napping in one of the armchairs in the library.

And whenever he sees Eskel, he runs over to him, demanding that he join in whatever game he’s playing. He doesn’t seem to notice or care that his friend is a fully-grown witcher, rather than the child he remembers. He still demands that Eskel count for hide and seek, or bake cookies with him, or help him prank Remus.

Eskel handles this about as well as can be expected, by running out of the room and hiding until Geralt’s shaky memory forgets that the encounter ever occurred. The mind of a spirit, especially a newborn, is almost as ephemeral as the ghost itself.

But each glimpse of the ghost has him dry heaving in the washroom, or slumping against a wall and refusing to move for hours. It beats the grief into him, over and over, a constant reopening of the same wound.

Lambert sits with him, sometimes, pressing against his side and letting some of his warmth leech into Eskel’s freezing bones. Vesemir doesn’t join them. He locked himself in his quarters the first time Geralt asked him for a hug, and hasn’t come out since.

***

And then, one day, Lambert sits down in front of Eskel instead of beside him. Eskel raises his head from his knees, confused about the break in their usual routine. Lambert is panting, his face veering between excitement and desperation.

“I just saw Geralt,” he says. Eskel hunches closer into himself. “None of that, this is good news. I think. He was crying.”

Eskel’s heart cracks at the thought of that, of the thought of Geralt sobbing over the memory of a skinned knee when he’s faced so much more than that, become so much more than that. 

“Why the fuck do you think I’d wanna know that?” he mutters, digging his nails into his forearms. Lambert leans forward and pries one of his hands loose.

“Because,” he says. “He was asking me why you keep running away from him.”

Eskel stares at him. Guilt and hope squirm in his chest as one.

“He’s starting to form new memories,” Lambert says. He squeezes Eskel’s hand. “That’s why I thought you’d wanna know.”

“Where is he?” Eskel asks, jumping to his feet. But he’s already heading for the front door, because he has a suspicion.

“The stables,” Lambert calls behind him, confirming it. Geralt always did run to the horses when he wanted to cry, even as a child.

***

He finds Geralt tucked behind a bale of hay against the back wall of the stables, rubbing at his not-wet eyes with his not-damp sleeve.

“Go away,” he mutters when Eskel crouches down in front of him. “I _know_ you hate me, you don’t need to be here.”

Eskel’s heart breaks even further. He takes a deep breath. Lets it out, nice and steady. He can’t cry, not here and not now, not when Geralt is finally acknowledging the passage of time.

“I don’t hate you,” Eskel says. He sits down, cross-legged. Geralt shrinks into himself, refusing to look at him.

“Then why do you keep running away?” he sniffles. “I _miss_ you, I thought you were my friend.”

Eskel tries to imagine how he would feel at this age, if Geralt started avoiding him. What he would want Geralt to say.

“I am your friend,” he starts. “I will _always_ be your friend, I just—look, Geralt, do you know what you are?”

Geralt tilts his head.

“A human? Still? I mean, we’re not witchers yet.”

Eskel swallows. Nods. He knows from experience that ghosts won’t listen when you tell them they’re dead. They need to discover that for themselves.

“Right. And I’m scared, Geralt. I’m scared about the trials. I’m scared about losing you.”

He looks down at his hands, clenched in fists in his lap. He wants to scream, sob, hit something as hard as he can. Curse whatever god decided to do this to Geralt.

“I am too,” Geralt says. “That’s why I want—we only have a bit of time left, Eskel. Before whatever happens to us happens. I want to spend it with you.”

Eskel nods. He plasters a smile on his face. It feels wrong there, stretching his cheeks until they hurt.

“I’d like to spend it with you, too,” he lies. “I’m sorry.”

Geralt sniffles again, then he jumps forward and throws his arms around Eskel’s waist.

They go right through him, sending a bolt of cold shivering through Eskel’s blood. Geralt doesn’t seem to notice.

“Come on!” he says, getting to his feet, tears already fading. “Let’s play tag!”

***

Eskel spends the afternoon chasing a horde of laughing ghosts through the halls of Kaer Morhen. Lambert joins in after about an hour, and it’s good for him, Eskel thinks. It’s good for him to finally move after months of stillness, to finally acknowledge that Geralt is really _there,_ really dead and haunting them.

It’s probably good for Eskel too, but it doesn’t feel like it. Every time he sees Geralt’s flashing feet and dancing curls and wild, human eyes it’s another knife in the chest.

Basic memory retention is a good sign, he reminds himself as he lunges forward to tag Lambert. A very good sign, especially this early on. It means that Geralt almost certainly won’t end up as a wraith. That no matter what, he’ll be able to stay in the halls of Kaer Morhen, either as a happy forever-child or as the image of the man that Eskel remembers.

But he’ll still never leave the halls of Kaer Morhen.

But he’ll still never hold Eskel ever again.

***

Eskel knocks on Vesemir’s door.

“He’s getting some of his memory back,” he says.

Nothing.

“You’ll probably want to talk to him, or he’ll wonder why you’re avoiding him.”

Nothing.

***

Eskel climbs the tallest tower in the keep and swings the door open.

His and Geralt’s room is just as they left it last winter, right down to the slightly rumpled sheets. He remembers them lying on top of the bed, trading their last desperate kisses before they needed to leave for the real world.

He doesn’t want to erase the impression that Geralt had left on the bed, the dips caused by his feet and ass and too sharp elbows, but he doesn’t think he can stay standing for another moment longer. So he collapses onto the bed, buries his face in Geralt’s pillow, and breathes in the scent of him—the sawdust and hay of the stables, warm spices from his cooking, a faint whiff of the chamomile oil he liked to use. His husband after a long winter of rest, free of any trace of blood or sword oil.

For the first time since Geralt’s death, he cries.

Although ‘crying’ seems like an inadequate word for his actions. It’s like a knot comes loose in his chest, and his soul comes pouring out of him. He wails, and screams, and chokes on the world, letting his grief free in great shudders of tears.

He doesn’t know how long it lasts for, but when it’s over, he is gasping for air around a throat stuffed full of mucus, and Geralt’s scent has almost disappeared beneath the smell of saltwater.

No. _No._ He can’t have ruined that. He _can’t_ have erased that.

He flips the pillow over, holds it up to his face, and takes a heaving gasp of air, then almost dissolves into a fresh wave of tears. It’s still there. Geralt’s scent still lingers.

He places the pillow back down slowly, reverently, and rolls over to his own side of the bed.

The sobs hiccup out of him long into the night.

***

He dreams of silver hair and laughter, arms buoying him up in a lake.

“That’s it, sweetheart, you’re doing great.”

Geralt, teaching him to swim on one of the rare summers they’d spent together at Kaer Morhen. Geralt laying with him on a sunny rock and letting Eskel play with his hair.

Geralt, warm and solid and alive.

***

He wakes on top of the bedsheets, his arms curled around himself. Chamomile and sawdust and spice. He breathes in Geralt and rises to meet the day.

***

Geralt and Lambert are baking together in the kitchen. Or well, Lambert is baking, Geralt is sitting on the counter, his legs swinging back and forth, ordering him around like a king presiding over his servants.

A surprised laugh bubbles out of Eskel at the sight, and two pairs of eyes snap towards him.

“Eskel!” Geralt yelps, climbing down from the counter. “Have you met Lambert yet?”

“Yeah,” Eskel says as Geralt tries to grab his hand.

“Well, you should hang out with him more. He knows the _best_ swear words.”

“Does he?” Eskel asks, raising an eyebrow at Lambert. He lets Geralt ‘pull’ him further into the kitchen, trying not to shiver at the coldness in his hand.

“What? I’m just trying to test his memory,” Lambert says, the picture of innocence.

“I should be testing _your_ memory,” Geralt grumbles, jumping back up on the counter. “Eskel, he doesn’t know how to whip egg whites at _all.”_

Eskel glances in the bowl that Geralt is pointing at. Foamy, pale liquid sloshes back at him.

“Yeah, Lamb, this doesn’t look great.”

Lambert scowls at him.

“Excuse me for not marrying a baking virtuoso,” he mutters. “I’d like to see you do any better.”

Eskel rolls up his sleeves.

“How much am I whipping this, Ger Bear?”

Geralt groans at Vesemir’s old nickname for him but otherwise doesn’t protest.

“Firm peaks,” he says. “We’re making meringue boats!”

“Firm peaks it is,” Eskel agrees, and gets to work.

The air feels just a bit less heavy.

***

He hovers outside Vesemir’s door. A plate of meringue boats, carefully filled with fruit preserves and whipped cream, is balanced in his hands.

“Vesemir? We uh—we made desert?”

No answer. Just the sound of someone shifting around inside. A sniffle. Eskel closes his eyes. Tries not to lose himself in the overwhelming grief of the night before.

Vesemir had acted like this after the sacking of Kaer Morhen too, had locked himself in his rooms and refused to come out for anything. The only one who could coax him out, eventually, was Geralt.

“I’ll just leave it out here, then,” he murmurs, and sets the plate down in front of the door.

When he comes back, it’s gone. That’s something at least.

He forces himself to see it as a victory.

***

Weeks pass like this. He sobs himself to sleep every night and tries his best to keep a brave face on for Geralt during the day. He chases the smell of sawdust and the dreams of warmth. He tries to talk Vesemir out of his room.

Geralt starts having moments of confusion.

Moments where he watches Eskel and Lambert eating their creations, and stares down at the food like he’s not sure why he’s not eating, too. Moments where he goes to hug Eskel, and then frowns at his arms, like he realizes they didn’t connect properly. Moments where he looks at Eskel’s face like he’s trying to figure it out.

Like he knows there’s something not quite right.

***

And then one day, Eskel wakes up and Geralt’s not in the kitchen. He’s not in the stables either, or the parlor. Eskel enlists Lambert’s help, and together they dash through the halls of the castle. The old, familiar panic of early winter sets in. _Where is he? Where is he? What happened to him?_

Eventually, they pause in front of a crumbling hallway that neither of them like to think about. It holds far too many ghosts, real and imagined both.

“Do you hear that?” Lambert asks. Eskel listens. An old voice, careworn and cracking, filled with warmth. Vesemir.

They tiptoe down the hallway, and the voice gets louder and louder. Eventually, they round a corner and find its source.

Vesemir, sitting on the long stone bench that had served as a waiting place for the boys awaiting the trials. Eskel still has nightmares sometimes, sitting on that bench and listening to the screams of the boys beyond the heavy wooden doors.

“And then I sliced its head off with one grand swoop,” Vesemir says, embellishing his tale with a dramatic gesture. Next to him, Geralt is watching, rapt with attention despite the fact that he has his knees bunched up to his chest, wide-eyed and trembling.

“What’s going on?” Lambert says, voice sharp. Eskel puts a hand on his shoulder. Even after all these years, the sight of the trial rooms brings his anger boiling to the surface.

Vesemir sighs, running his fingers through Geralt’s ephemeral hair.

“It’s a common phase,” he says, just as Geralt pipes up.

“I’m waiting,” he says.

Nausea pools in Eskel’s stomach.

“I’m gonna be a real witcher!” he says, vibrating with fear and excitement. “Just like you, right Ves?”

Vesemir nods.

“Just like me,” he says. His voice is remarkably steady. Like he’s shunted aside his grief in favor of responsibility.

He looks up.

“Go on, lads,” he says. “You don’t want to see this.”

“No way,” Lambert says, before even Eskel can protest. “I’m staying with him.”

Geralt looks at Eskel, eyes bright and human for the last time.

“So am I.”

***

The three of them huddle around Geralt as he writhes and hollers, his screams echoing up and down the corridor. His form flickers wildly as he curls in on himself, eyes blown wide, screaming and screaming and _screaming._

Eskel would give anything to hold him.

***

Geralt goes still sometime around midnight. His body flickers again. Again.

When it reforms he looks significantly older, somewhere in his late teens. Vesemir sighs.

“And so this stage begins,” he mutters. “Bouncing around between memories.”

He cards his hand through Geralt’s hair.

“We got lucky,” he says. “Some of them get stuck in the trials.”

Eskel presses his forehead against his hands and tries to get that awful _what-if_ out of his mind. Vesemir leans against him, rubbing his back in gentle circles.

“He’s okay,” he says, as the tears start to drip between Eskel’s fingers. “He’s okay. This is a _good_ thing Eskel. It means his mind is starting to process what happened to him.”

Eskel nods but he can’t move. He can’t breathe under the heaviness of the air. He can’t get the image of Geralt, screaming as his body is broken and rebuilt, out of his head.

“Where the fuck were you these past few weeks?” Lambert says, though it doesn’t contain his usual biting anger. He mostly sounds exhausted. “Huh? Where were you when I needed you? When _Eskel_ needed you?”

Vesemir bows his head.

“I wouldn’t have been much help to either of you,” he murmurs. Lambert deflates.

“Please don’t leave us again,” he says. “I don’t—I won’t ask you to help us. But please don’t hide again.”

Vesemir sighs. Opens up his arm and draws Lambert against his other side.

“Alright,” he says. “No more hiding.”

***

Sometimes Geralt is a moody teenager, sulking and stumbling and pulling at his hair. Eskel remembers when Geralt had come to his room in the middle of the night, sobbing hysterically because his hair was growing in white. He remembers desperately trying to convince Geralt to stop yanking at it, to stop pulling it out by the fistful. He remembers Geralt walking around the keep, furious and humiliated, great tufts of hair missing. He remembers shaving the rest of it off, keeping up a soothing litany of words the entire time.

Now, he sits with Geralt when his frustration at his new body gets to be too much to hold, throwing pebbles in the lake for him since he can’t lift them. He listens to Geralt as he screams and rages at the mother who left him. He reminds Geralt of all the things they can do, all the things they can see, once they’re on the Path.

He ignores the fact that _this_ Geralt will never see any of those places or people or wild new skies.

He ignores the fact that one of those places killed him.

***

The smell of chamomile is almost gone. Eskel spends a week sleeping on the floor instead, hoping that staying away from the sheets might be enough to preserve it.

***

“We should have a funeral,” Lambert says one day. Eskel gets up and walks out of the room.

The thought of standing around a corpse-less pyre, speaking words on a man who’s standing _right there,_ still not knowing what happened to him—

He can’t do it. Not yet.

***

Sometimes, Geralt is a young man, freshly home from his first year on the Path and aching from how much the world hates him. Sometimes he cries for hours on end, sobbing over a villager he wasn’t able to save, a village who responded to his failures with violence. Sometimes, he stops crying altogether, and spends hours just staring out the window.

Eskel remembers this winter. He remembers the fear of it, how close he came to losing Geralt. He remembers holding Geralt’s hands when all he wanted to do was wrap them around the handle of a knife. He remembers Geralt vanishing into the woods one night, remembers Vesemir bringing him back hours later, frozen and blue and damp with lake water.

He remembers Geralt wanting to die.

He remembers how close he came to succeeding.

He can’t do much for Geralt now, just as he couldn’t do much for him then. But he lets Geralt cry by his side, he tells Geralt that everything’s gonna be okay, he builds up a fire when Geralt starts shivering with the memory of that frozen lake.

He wants to hug him. Wants to hug him tightly against his heart and never let him go.

***

He starts baking some of Geralt’s favorite recipes without prompting. Sometimes, Geralt—child, teenager, young adult—leans against the counter, watching him with judgmental eyes that stay the same no matter what age he is, alternating between open-mouthed horror and begrudging approval. Sometimes, he’s off doing something else in the keep, pestering Lambert or Vesemir or one of the other ghosts. So Eskel bakes for himself. He bakes and he sings, softly and terribly off-key.

He eats his creations hot out of the oven and he can practically feel Geralt’s arms wrapping around his waist.

***

One morning, he wakes up shivering, ice flooding every bit of his veins. He looks down to see transparent arms looped around and through his chest, rolls over to see Geralt—still a young man but past the horror of the lake—grinning lazily at him.

“Morning, sweetheart,” he says, and Eskel’s face is plunged into the icy cold as Geralt attempts to kiss him. “Sleep alright?”

Eskel closes his eyes. He knew that they would reach a memory like this someday. He tried to brace himself for it.

But it _hurts. It aches,_ having Geralt so close to him and yet so unreachably far away. To have him pressed against Eskel but not be able to feel his warmth. To see the love in his eyes, but know that it could soon be lost to a different memory.

“Never better,” he lies.

***

There is one memory that they all know Geralt is hurtling towards.

They are all simultaneously hoping for it and dreading it.

***

It returns with a familiar chestnut mare.

She comes galloping into their courtyard in early spring, a week after the pass has thawed enough to get through. She is skinny, far too skinny, her saddle sliding loosely over her back, her ribs stark against her skin.

Lambert and Vesemir rush to her side, pulling off the saddle and its various packs, fetching a large bushel of hay, speaking soothing words in her ears. But Eskel hangs back. Because Geralt has gone very quiet, and very, _very_ still next to him.

His horse home without her rider.

Figures that would be the thing to break through to him.

He hits the ground with a scream.

***

Cuts are opening up all over him, bruises are blooming across his skin—and they’re in the shapes of boots and fists, and it figures that Geralt wouldn’t die to a monster.

It figures that he would die to the very people he spent his whole life trying to save.

Because isn’t that just _fucking perfect?_

***

He screams for hours and hours and hours and gods, had it taken him this long to die? Eskel is starting to fear that it might go on for days, weeks, months, that someone had _taken him,_ had tortured him to death, had–

Geralt’s chest stops moving.

It’s easy to see what killed him. His skull is caved in, right above his right temple. A deliberate blow or an overenthusiastic one, Eskel doesn’t know and he doesn’t want to ask.

His stomach heaves. He swallows, rapidly, repeatedly, beats back the nausea and the tears and curls up next to Geralt’s side.

“I’m here,” he whispers, though he’s not sure if Geralt can hear him. “I’m here. I’ve always been here.”

Geralt is still. His eyes are glassy, unmoving as the rest of him, staring blankly up at the sky. But Eskel can see not-tears slipping down his cheeks, pooling at the edge of his jaw. Eskel rests his hand inside Geralt’s and breathes.

***

Vesemir comes outside as the night gathers above him and drapes a blanket across Eskel.

“We’ll be in the parlor,” he says, ruffling a hand through Eskel’s hair, like he’s a child again, afraid of the dark. “Yell if you need anything.”

***

“I’m dead,” Geralt whispers, hours later. “Aren’t I?”

“Yeah,” Eskel says.

Geralt turns his head to face him, shifts himself so that he’s lying on his side. The blood and bruises and crushed skull are, thank the gods, gone. The not-tears remain.

“I wish I could hug you,” Geralt says. A sob bursts out of Eskel’s lips before he can stop it. To hear his own, winter-long wish reflected back at him through his husband—it’s a relief and an agony all at once.

Geralt’s face crumples.

“I am so, _so_ sorry, sweetheart,” he says. “I—I can’t imagine—”

“Don’t apologize,” Eskel says. He shifts his hand within Geralt’s, praying that it feels _something_ like he’s running his thumb over Geralt’s knuckles. “Don’t. You—you’re the one that’s dead, I’m just—”

“Grieving,” Geralt says. He presses his forehead against Eskel’s and Eskel shudders. Geralt frowns, moving to pull away.

“Don’t,” Eskel says. “Please, stay.”

Geralt hesitates, but comes back, pressing himself against Eskel. Eskel shivers again, but leans into the cold. This is who Geralt is now.

“You’re so warm,” Geralt sighs.

“Am I?”

“Like stepping into a hot bath.”

Eskel slips forward and presses his whole body into, and then _through,_ Geralt. The cold rushes through him, like he’s lain down in a snowbank, but Geralt makes the happiest little sound, snuggling into Eskel like he’s the warmest blanket in the world.

“L-let’s go inside,” Eskel says around chattering teeth. “Lemme get in front of a warm fire, alright? And then I’m gonna hold you as long as you want.”

Geralt nods, getting to his feet in a single, fluid movement. Eskel follows him, shivers slipping through his body from crown to toes.

***

Later, they lie together in the parlor. Vesemir and Lambert are snoring somewhere behind them. The fire crackles in front of them. Eskel doesn’t feel so cold like this, even though Geralt is almost fully intertwined with him.

“I love you,” he murmurs in Geralt’s ear. “I love you so much.”

“You shouldn’t,” Geralt says. He hasn’t stopped shedding those not-tears. Eskel thinks of how long and how hard he’d cried that first night. How long some of his crying fits last, even now. And Geralt is just beginning the process of grieving for his own life. “You should find—I don’t know. Someone better. Someone alive. It can’t be healthy to—”

“To support my husband, no matter what?” He presses his lips through Geralt’s cheek. “To love him, no matter what shitty things the world does to him?” His temple. “To honor the promises we made to each other?” His lips. Geralt shivers.

“I love you,” Eskel says. “And I will keep you warm as long as you want me to.”

Geralt sighs. His fingers trail up Eskel’s back, neck, slip inside and settle somewhere around his heart. His hands always were so cold, even when he was alive.

“I want you to,” he says.


End file.
